A Little Deeper
by gillan
Summary: AU. a girl, a boy, and a lot of ice cream. —for lauren/v-day exchange.


**A Little Deeper**

for lauren (discursive)

.

He confiscated our phones.

Granted, we deserved it, but I flinched anyway when they disappeared into our manager's seedy back pocket. Beside me, Leesh snarled, pleats in her brow and her pointer finger already on the move. I knew what was coming.

"Listen, _buddy_." She went straight for his name tag, jabbing fiercely. "We weren't even _doing_ anything!"

I swallowed hard. Placing my hand on her shoulder, I eased her back from our manager. His eyebrows were drawn together, his sleeves were spun past his elbows, and a row of crowded teeth flared behind his recoiled lips. I cast my eyes to the floor.

Leesh had a brassy voice that carried like sand in the wind, and the rapt stares of eager patrons were already hot on the back of my neck. I slipped my other hand over the crest of my brow, gathering a tuft of my hair in a desperate fist. "Relax, Leesh—"

My breath caught in my throat when he beckoned us to the kitchen with an angry snap of his wrist. Leesh stormed after him instantly. My hand slid limply to my side before I trudged behind her undulating ponytail.

When I darted past the door, with my heart slicked apprehensively to the inner recesses of my ribs, he was already shouting.

"How many times have I told you to get off your godforsaken _phones_?" Even the ends of his gringo mustache quivered.

I pressed my lips together, praying that she would endure his berating; that she would nod sincerely and return to slicing the Quattro Formaggi behind the counter. Instead, Leesh snapped, "Four, _your highness_," and I groaned inwardly.

I was going to kill her.

Apart from the slightest intake of his breath bristling the silence, our manager stood rooted in place, motionless. "Aprons," he spat finally, cheeks flushed an entrenched pink. His outstretched hands grappled at the air. "Give them to me. And scat!"

I could have bowled a strike with the lump in my throat. I complied silently, discarding the apron like a second skin and placing it in his grubby hands.

We were barely out the door—Leesh swearing under her breath, me on the verge of repugnant tears—when she stopped in her tracks.

"Dyl, we forgot our phones."

.

There was a derelict barn about a mile down the street that sold ice cream. It was weathered and archaic, folded into a dark corner on U Street, and easy to miss if you weren't paying attention. A narrow limb projected from the side's wooden panels, a plastic cake cone dangling at its rickety lip.

Leesh wrinkled her nose and I crossed my arms, but it wasn't like we had the freedom to be finicky. Just three days after what Leesh had begun referring to as "The Shitty Manager Incident," we were job hunting—again. We'd been fired twice this summer—three times if you counted Leesh's breakdown in Payless, which I didn't.

"After you," I directed brusquely, still fairly peeved by her derisory self-discipline.

Though the exterior of the store left a lot to be desired, the inside was redolent of a 1950s diner. Amid the red vinyl seats, torn posters, and monochrome checkers, a string of dipper wells and ice cream freezers were pushed against the wall.

We were effectively welcomed with open arms by the Screaming Cone staff (all two of them), who kindly brushed off our disagreeable records as ill-fated stumbling blocks. Their rules were simple: dish up generously and tie back long hair.

"Think you can manage that?" I asked Leesh innocently, turning away with a broad smile as her middle finger swam into my line of sight.

.

When we were put to work, our first task was to collect ice to place beneath the steam table pans. Together, Leesh and I entered the storage room in the back, which smelled like frostbite and skin under the rain. By the time we'd reached the strip of freezers in the back, I was pimpled with goosebumps, and my breath ran white and puffy.

"Let's hurry up before the hypothermia settles in," Leesh complained, already elbow-deep in the sacks of ice.

"Yeah, or before you get us fired again," I wheezed, diving into the freezer beside her.

"Fuck you."

"I mean," I continued, cracking a grin as a visible flush crept into her cheeks. "This has to be a world record—fired from three summer jobs, and it's only July!"

"I hate you."

We drew back from the room after we'd loaded our arms. Just as I stepped through the door, teeth chattering, I spotted it: a SUNY Geneseo t-shirt, dark blue, with the sleeves punched back and a wet stain where the print met the collar.

"I go there!" I exclaimed, just as the sacks of ice slipped from my frozen fingers and cracked across the tile floor. Leesh and the three other customers turned to stare. The boy in the t-shirt lifted his head from his cell phone.

His expression was the picture of confusion. Heavy lids, dark eyes that darted back and forth very fast, wide creases in his brow.

Geneseo Boy tucked his phone away. "Cool," he said remarkably slowly, like the words were being physically stripped from his tongue.

"Leesh, look!" I turned around to face Leesh, gesturing riotously at his t-shirt.

"Go Knights," Leesh replied half-heatedly, shooting me a fleeting look I couldn't interpret before she disappeared into the storage room again.

I wasn't surprised when the conversation came to a standstill. I knew that I'd startled him, but I couldn't help myself. SUNY College at Geneseo was tucked away in the east side of the rural Genesee Valley, a tedious two hour drive and several cows away from the Screaming Cone. It wasn't often that Geneseo students crossed paths off campus.

"I'm majoring in nursing," I offered finally, wringing my fingers while I rocked back and forth on the balls of my feet.

Geneseo Boy dropped his gaze to the ice splayed on the ground. "I guess we're all doomed."

"What?"

"I was kidding," he snorted.

I let out a breathy half-laugh and dropped to my knees to collect the ice. After I straightened, I took two vacillating steps back and cocked my head. He stood with his feet together and his shoulders hooked. His hands were shoved so deep into his pockets that he might as well not have had any at all.

"Do you want ice cream, um…?" I sought out a name tag, or an intricate scrawl on a customized backpack—anything. I lifted my brow, the implication strung in the air between us as I adjusted the ice in my arms.

"I'm Josh Hotz."

.

I struck the countertop with a laminated menu and slid it under his nose.

"So are you going to be a sophomore?" I inquired conversationally, skirting my hand across the lids of the ice cream tubs at my waist. "You don't look like a freshman…but I guess you never know, right? I have a cousin—he's like a mammoth of a guy, really tall—and during his first year at Fredonia he was mistaken for a senior like, a billion times. I'm not even—"

"I'm not going." His terseness took me by surprise, and my fingers froze on a lid. "I'm—I'm not going," he reiterated quickly. "To Geneseo, I mean. Not anymore."

For some reason, I felt a little insulted. "What's wrong with Geneseo?"

"The school is _fine_, that's not—"

"Then what?"

"Listen—" Josh stopped himself, and his eyes dipped briefly to the menu. "What'd you say your name was, again?"

I didn't. Sighing, I tucked my chin between my palms and pressed myself against the counter. "I'm Dylan."

He frowned. "That's…not a girl's name," he muttered.

It was nothing I hadn't heard before; I allotted myself a few melodramatic eye rolls. "You're very insightful," I remarked. His shoulders were so hunched, he grew into himself. "Which is why," I continued casually, "If you want my two cents, I think you should stay at Geneseo."

Josh pinched the bridge of his nose, guiding his eyes away from the menu. "Dylan."

"Why wouldn't you want to stay? There's a 'Zombies in Popular Media' class," I pressed. It was true; Leesh had taken it at the end of our freshman year, and apparently, the TA was hot.

"There's a—_what_?" He kneaded his clenched eyes and quickly shook his head. "Nevermind. I'll take a…" He had barely spared the menu a glance before he was unfolding his wallet. "Pistachio."

"Excellent choice. It's gluten-free."

He shot me a fleeting look, his eyebrows tangled and wound high, before he pitched a five dollar bill onto the counter. "Whatever," he scowled, returning his wallet to his back pocket. His impatience was transparent—I could hear his foot drumming the floor as I looped an apron over my neck.

"By all means," he said in a tone permeated with unadulterated exasperation, "Take all the time in the world."

I looked up and snorted. "Someone's busy," I mused, peeling back the lid to the tub of pistachio. "Y'have places to be? Girls to see?" I flexed my arm before passing it through the ice cream with an ice cream spade.

"I hardly think visiting my grandma qualifies as 'girls to see,' Dylan."

I glanced up, my interest sufficiently peaked. "Why're you visiting your grandma?"

He ignored me. I decided against pushing him for an explanation, pressing my lips together as I handed Josh his waffle cone.

Then, before I could say anything else, he nodded swiftly and spun around, striding past the doors and into the street.

.

Business at the Screaming Cone, I came to learn, was agonizingly slow.

With less than four people dribbling in each hour, every second crawled; Leesh and I eventually resorted to entertaining ourselves with a decrepit deck of cards.

A week into the job, we were halfway through an intense match of Kings in the Corner when the door skated open. Leesh aligned her black four and red three, calling over her shoulder, "Just a second!" I scrutinized my hand of cards. I had a black King, but Leesh had one card left. I figured it was safer to play the Ace.

I was so focused on watching Leesh that I didn't look up until I heard a voice.

"I could really use an ice cream."

I jumped. The cards slipped from my fingers and plunged to the floor.

"Hey!" It was the guy from last week, still wilting and scowling and stooped. He wore a New York Yankees baseball cap this time, and no Geneseo t-shirt. "You're Josh!"

He nodded distractedly, looking around. From the inflowing slant of his jaw, he seemed to be biting the inside of his cheek.

"Um, are you okay?" I wasn't even sure if he'd heard me through all of his fidgeting. He kept alternating between running his knuckles over the bill of his baseball cap and crushing his thumb against the puffy eyelets. "Pistachio again?"

Before he had a chance to reply, his cell phone began blaring from his back pocket; some proverbial jingle with traces of the flute.

His face fell. "Look, I need to take this," he mumbled, squinting at the screen as if he didn't quite know what to make of it. I merely nodded, waiting expectantly. Josh let out a strangled sigh and removed his baseball cap. "Can I just…just, like, talk somewhere private? It's pretty important."

I bit my lip and craned my neck. Leesh was busy lacerating a chunk of Neapolitan, and the two bosses were out. Pulling a face, I finally jerked my head towards the storage room. "It's sub-zero inside, but…"

The corners of his mouth twitched, like he was trying to smile but couldn't figure out how. He sped away, and had one foot through the door before he projected his neck to turn and glare at me. "Stay out there," Josh snapped accusingly. "I mean it."

I nodded rigorously, waiting until he'd disappeared into the storage room before I crept up behind the door, feeling only a little guilty. I wasn't a compulsive liar by any means. Admittedly, I had stolen Massie Block's xylophone in the fourth grade before denying it up and down when she confronted me about it, but she definitely deserved it.

I pressed my ear against the wall, but pulled away when I caught Leesh staring. Feigning indifference, I eased my fingers through a knot in my hair until she cast her gaze back down to the Neapolitan below her. Once she'd glanced away, I resumed my preliminary position and held my breath.

"…With the nastiest pistachio ice cream on the face of the planet," Josh exhaled harshly from the other room.

I frowned. Overpriced and gluten-free, maybe. But not nasty.

He began to pace—swift, heated steps that made my heart pick up speed. "Why did you call me?" He deadpanned in a sour voice. "Look, it's none of your business. If I want to leave, I'll—I'll fucking leave. I'm an adult."

Whoever was on the other end of the line must not have been happy with his answer; he was silent for a long time before he flew off the handle.

"Because of _you_, Mom! I swear to God, all of you are _so_ fucking blind!… What do you mean, 'calm down?' I'm calm!… How can you be blaming _me_ for this? The problem's rooted in your substandard parenting skills and your inability to see past the end of your own goddamn nose…"

His voice grew so thick with emotion, I wondered momentarily if he would cry. I heard him toss a stifled goodbye into the air before it faded into a new sound: coagulated and heavy breathing, one exhale strung languorously like syrup into the next.

My own breathing, though, picked up speed. My mind was racing.

"Was that your Mom?" I jutted my chin around the corner, unable to help myself. His back was to me and his shoulders were rigid, but he jumped at my voice like a cat on hot bricks. When his eyes met mine he clapped his hand fiercely over his face. The sound rang out, barely masking the lilts in his breath as he panted furiously.

"_Je-sus Christ_." When he pulled his hand away, his face went slack. "What is _wrong_ with you?" He hissed, beet-reed. His fingers flew to his head again to grip his hair. "Do you have fucking boundary issues? I mean it, Dylan—stop _laughing_, it's a serious question!"

Serious question though it might have been, I couldn't help my muffled peals of mirth or full-fledged grin. "You never answered my question," I chastised, deflecting his frustration with a careless wave of my hand.

"Oh, excuse me," he snarled, his tone stripped of all sincerity as he wedged his baseball cap over his thick dark hair. "Because, like, I'm the one who's completely at fault here, right?" After one last cold glare, Josh stormed past me and past Leesh, who yelped in surprise from the other room.

It happened so fast that the blistering shame took a moment to settle in. Suddenly my mouth felt limp and dry. Of all the reactions I'd considered, I hadn't prepared myself for his raw vehemence. For a few seconds, I stood frozen in the storage room, my joints locked but not from the cold.

Just as I swallowed, the bells above the exit jingled, and the door slammed shut.

.

The following day lagged longer than it usually did.

I tried to keep my mind occupied, but the more I scooped the more I felt it—a sickening distortion in my gut that churned the way ice cream did, swiftly and slickly and all at once. Leesh left me alone, for the most part. I appreciated the gesture, but it didn't stop me from scolding her when she started scooping the strawberry ice cream from the middle instead of from the outside.

"Just call him, for Christ's sake," Leesh snapped later that day, after I'd ferociously badgered a preteen who couldn't decide what to order. "You're driving everyone _insane_!" I knew that. I was driving myself insane, too.

It took me twenty-two minutes and fourteen seconds to rush home and shuffle through the Geneseo directory that I usually used as a dinner placemat. His inky name was pinched between a Hollis and a Hough.

I dialed the number with trembling hands, and then clung to the phone like a spider to a web.

"Hello?" He sounded tired.

"Josh?"

"Who is—" He paused, and I pressed my lips together. Finally, he muttered, "Dylan?" His voice was low, controlled. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. "How…how did you get my number?"

"The Geneseo directory," I said carefully, trying to gauge Josh's reaction through the exhales he passed through the phone. "I know that's creepy, but—"

"Yeah, it is."

I frowned. "Can you please go to the shop tomorrow? I need to apologize."

"I really don't think—"

"_Please_."

Josh was silent for a while, and my heart picked up speed until I heard him discharge a weedy promise—an "_I'll be there_" trailed by an "_I guess_." Then he hung up.

.

When Josh slouched into the Screaming Cone the next day, with poor posture and a snarl on his face, my first instinct was to fix my hair. I wasn't sure why.

I had lots of hair, unruly and dark orange, that I usually kept contained at the nape of my neck with a rubber band. The pieces in front of my ears were always brutally frizzed by noon, and for the first time, I cared. Sighing, I brushed the thought away and took a deep breath.

"Will you follow me?" I asked, gesturing towards the storage room.

Josh traced my footsteps wordlessly, slumping through the door that I held open for him as he steered his hands into his back pockets. Inside, I sank to the ground, my back pressed against cold sandstone. When he mimicked me, dropping to the floor and pulling his knees to his chest, I let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding in.

"I'm really sorry about listening in on your conversation," I began flatly, ogling my hands. "It…wasn't my proudest moment. It was actually really stupid. I don't even know why I did it. I think I was just curious, because you're, like, kind of mysterious and you hunch a lot…like you have secrets. And the first time we met, you just walked out after I asked you a question. Like, who does that?"

He frowned. "If this is your idea of an apology…"

"No—_fuck_—you're right," I breathed, rubbing my temples. "I'm really sorry. I won't do it again."

Josh digested the apology begrudgingly, nodding and picking at a hole in his jeans. I was fairly certain he was waiting for me to leave. Maybe he wanted to be alone, or maybe he just wanted to escape the bitter cold of the storage room. I could understand that. I made to stand up, but I wasn't an inch off the ground before he had wrapped his hand around my wrist to jerk me back down to the floor.

"_Ow_," I complained.

He ignored me. "My family's fucked up, Dylan," he said, his jaw jumping like he'd just swallowed poison.

"What?"

Josh rested his chin on the forearm slung across his knee. "That's why I can't stay, or go to Geneseo. I need to leave them," he garbled into his skin.

"Everyone's family is fucked up," I frowned. I couldn't remember the last time I talked to my Mom, and I'd only met my biological father once. He called me Dinah.

"My grandma's tolerable," he admitted, almost to himself, as if I hadn't said anything at all. "But she keeps defending them, and _god_, I don't want them to be defended."

"It can't be all bad. You can still fix things!"

"I don't _want_ to fix things. Not with them," he told me stubbornly, his eyebrows laced together.

I shook my head slowly. "Don't make rash decisions because of them. You…you've got a great school. You…um, appear to be financially stable. You have friends. Don't throw that all away."

Josh simply lifted a shoulder in reply, and I got the feeling that this conversation was over. Eventually, he turned his head almost lazily to glance at me.

I swallowed, returning the look. He was…very attractive. I'd noticed it from the start, but sitting beside him with our knees knocking, I was hyperaware of it all—his smooth brown eyes, his high cheekbones, his two lips like damp cherries piled on top of each other.

I bent my neck temporarily; looking at his mouth was only going to give me a conniption. "Do you really think our pistachio ice cream is gross?" I asked waveringly, wrestling for something to say.

He sighed. "You're so annoying," he replied quietly. His eyes flicked down to stare unabashedly at my parted lips.

I emitted a strangled laugh. Every shared, stagnant breath pushed my stomach to bottom out. We were so close; I could draw our mouths together if I wanted to.

And I absolutely wanted to.

Boldly, I leaned forward, my eyes drifting closed. All of my frustration with his naked stubbornness disappeared as he nudged my nose aside with his, tilting his head.

"Dyl, _hurry up_! We have customers!"

Leesh's voice, sharp and aggravated from the other room, hit me like a bullet to the brain.

My eyelids snapped back and I tore across the room, stumbling and blinded by embarrassment. I pushed passed Leesh and tore into the bathroom, attending to the lock with shaking fingers. It took half a minute to twist the knob.

Sinking to the floor, I dropped my head to my hands and tried to breathe.

.

I decided to pretend it never happened—the ephemeral conversation, the almost-kiss…

He wanted to run from his problems? Fine. What did I care? But I realized, while softening the butter pecan with an oxidized spoon, that I did care quite a bit. I hadn't seen him in three days—he could be across the world by now. Maybe it was for the best.

I snapped the lid over the butter pecan and smoothed my palm over it, fully aware that I was lying to myself.

All of a sudden, a muted shadow dimmed the counter, and I heard the voice before I had a chance to glance up.

"One pistachio cone, please."

My mouth pursed until it ran numb. Hastily, I ducked my head and grabbed an ice cream spade, pointedly avoiding his eyes. I ran my tongue along the frame of my mouth, before it finally settled in the cup of my cheek. I scooped absentmindedly while I deliberated over what to say. Mostly, though, I just wanted to know why he was here.

Eventually, I lifted the cone above the counter and held it out, careful not to touch his hands during the exchange.

"Thank you," he said. The message felt empty but utterly suffocating all at once, and it drew my knuckles white.

It took me only a few short seconds to swallow his hollow gratitude, and it took just a moment longer for me to grasp why I hadn't replied. It had little to do with him being an irritable and reticent asshole, and more to do with the way I felt enigmatically betrayed. Even at best, I was annoyed. He was rude to his family, and he was as stubborn as an ox, and his hard eyes were so extinguished that they couldn't have grasped an opportunity if it climbed onto his face. But mostly, I was sad.

"I'll, uh, see you around."

My neck snapped up so quickly it stung. When I met his gaze, his shoulders sagged in what might have been relief.

"You will?" My heart swelled with pleasure.

Josh shrugged. "Well yeah. We're going to the same school, aren't we?" He turned on his heel, hastily, with his head bowed like he was hiding a smile. When Josh reached the door, he pivoted and drew a hand through his hair, the other still shoved deep in his pocket. "I wouldn't miss 'Zombies in Popular Media' for the world."

.

_author's note_: it was one cliché after the next…whoops. also very cheesy. but i really hope you liked it, lauren! happy valentine's day! special thanks to livvy for being my best friend, my bs2, and for inspiring me to write a fic about job hunting (and also boys but shh).

prompts- xylophones, muffled laughter, ice, and torn posters.


End file.
